


The City

by YumeArashi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Dystopia, Exile, Gen, Minor Character Death, Prologue, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 14:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YumeArashi/pseuds/YumeArashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the serene beauty of a perfect city, one young man becomes a flaw in the system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The City

**Author's Note:**

> This could maybe be considered a stand-alone piece, but really it reads more like a prologue to some longer work. As much as I would love to write the rest of the story, I simply don't have the attention span for anything much over 20 pages. So if that bothers you, you might want to hit the Back button.

* * *

 

            Sascha had been ecstatic when he learned he’d been chosen for Elevation.

            He walked eagerly through the gleaming white halls of the City, the simple white robe he wore contrasting starkly with his dark hair and deep blue eyes.  He drew envious stares from the other inhabitants - not for his looks, for everyone in the City was flawlessly beautiful, but for the joy that clearly marked him as Chosen.

            He was early to the Chamber, but many of the other were as well, and they shared their stories as they waited.  A young woman, hoping that one day her two small children would be Elevated as well.  An older man, weeping with happiness that the virtue he’d striven to embody his whole life was being acknowledged.  Little children, reassured by strangers in the absence of their parents.

            The Official arrived, and Sascha was mildly surprised to recognize the middle aged-man with whom he played chess three times a week in the Recreation Area.  He’d known the man was an Official, but not that he was so highly honored as to preside over Elevations.  Speaking of one’s designated role was not a topic of conversation for the Recreation Area, after all. 

            The man stared at Sascha for a moment, then opened a door to an adjoining room, small and featureless.  “If you would all please come this way,” he said calmly, and they did.  The Official tapped Sascha on the shoulder as he passed. “A moment, if you please.”

            Sascha waited as little anxiously while the other went into the room and the door was closed.  Had there possibly been some mistake?  But no, mistakes didn’t happen in the City.  That was for other places.  Once the door was secured, the official went to a panel beside the door and tapped in a few codes on the number pad. 

            From behind the door, screaming began.

            Sascha cried out in shock.  He’d never heard anyone scream - the City had taken away fear, taken away pain.  But on a deep, fundamental level he know that this was terribly, terribly wrong.  He pulled at the arm of the stone-faced Official.  “Stop, you have to stop the Elevation, something’s wrong!”

            “Nothing is wrong,” the Official told him wearily.  “You have now seen the truth of this City, which few besides me know.  This is what becomes of the sick, the old, the weak - the imperfect.  Not joyous ascension to a higher plane of existence, but pain and death. The City is a lie.”

            Sascha made a sick little bleating sound, backing away from the man, but the Official didn’t stop.  “You were supposed to be in that room - don’t ask me why, they never tell me things like that - so you can’t stay here.  I can get you outside the City.  Maybe you won’t live much longer there than if I’d left you with the others, but at least you’ll have a chance.”

            The younger man looked horrified - outside the City?  He wasn’t entirely sure that the Elevation room wouldn’t still be the preferable option, but there was no time for questions as the Official chivvied him through back halls to a small but heavily secured door at the outmost edge of the City.  More codes were typed in, the locks drew back one by one, and eventually the door opened onto a riot of sound and color and smell.  It was as utterly unlike the City as it was impossible for Sascha to ever have imagined, and he quailed at it.   The Official pushed him through.  “May the gods have more mercy on you than this City did.”

            The door closed, leaving Sascha Outside.


End file.
